The big decision is in: United Airlines plans to wean itself off its decades-long reservations-system provider, Travelport’s Apollo, and to migrate its reservations to HP‘s SHARES system in 2012.
Travelport broke the news in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, explaining that United notified Travelport Dec. 16 that the airline intends to terminate their contract for Apollo reservations-system services on March 1, 2012. The contract was due to expire in 2013.
Travelport said it expects United, which merged with Continental on Oct. 1, will consolidate its internal reservations system within the system that Continental uses.
Continental currently uses the HP SHARES reservations system.
However, United informed employees of the decision in an internal bulletin Dec. 21.
United told employees it will use SHARES for “reservation, check-in and e-Commerce.”
United also stated it will use United systems for flight operations, Continental systems for crew management, Orion, ARORA and SDO from United for revenue management and network operations, and a cargo vendor is still under review.
The airline said it based its technology systems decisions based on whether the vendor provides the best customer and employee experience and facilitates growth of the combined airline; whether the system is cost-effective and allows easy migration; and whether the system can be easily enhanced and accommodate changes to United’s business model.
Rashaan Johnson, a United spokesman, confirmed that the airline evaluated Apollo, SHARES and “several other options” and chose HP SHARES as the best customer and employee alternative and because its ability to handle a migration “in a reasonable amount of time.”
In the days when airlines commonly owned reservations systems and GDSs — then known as Computerized Reservations Systems or CRSs — United created the Apollo Reservations System in 1971.
The decision is a big win for HP, which provides reservations systems for numerous carriers and has a contract to build a new reservations system for American Airlines. American calls the new res system Jetstream and HP is marketing its next-generation res system as HP Agilaire Passenger Service Solution to other airlines.
United’s decision to transition to HP is a significant blow to both Travelport and Amadeus.
“It is expected that once United fully transitions off the Apollo system, which would be during the 2012 fiscal year at the earliest, it may adversely affect our results of operations due to the loss of fees resulting from this agreement, unless such revenue can be regained through the sale of other services to United or other carriers,” Travelport said.
Travelport said it expects to feel the financial impact of United’s decision in 2012 at the earliest.
United is among Travelport’s largest customers in North America and as late as April 2010, Travelport was stating publicly that it didn’t expect United to transition to a different reservations system.
United’s decision to transition its internal reservations system to HP could conceivably lead to a legal wrangle with Amadeus.
In 2005, United signed a contract to transition its internal reservations system from Apollo to the Amadeus Altéa solution, but the migration never happened.
Amadeus is taking the stance that its reservations system contract with United remains in effect.
Henry Harteveldt, Forrester Research’s principal travel analyst, says United decided to transition to HP out of technology, cost and control concerns.
United would be HP’s largest airline customer and would be able to have considerable influence into improvements in the SHARES system and the development direction of the Agilaire system, Harteveldt says.
Even before HP acquired EDS, which operated the SHARES system, EDS had been making system improvements, he adds.
Harteveldt considers United’s decision an interim step as it works to get through the merger.
“I think this is step 1 of a multi-step process,” Harteveldt says. “This is an interim solution. I don’t think in five or six years this is where we will see United Airlines.”
In other words, Harteveldt argues that in the future the merged United Airlines, with Continental in the fold, will reassess its overall technology needs and decide whether it would remain with HP.
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Just a minor correction. EDS did not create the SHARES system. It was created out of the basic Continental Airlines internal system then called SRS which stood for Stateseman Reservation Service.
Timothy: Thanks, and fixed.
United did this out of cost concerns, plain and simple. SHARES doesn’t have a big license fee and Apollo does. Every veteran agent I’ve spoken to says that many processes, including IRROPS, take 10x longer on SHARES then on Apollo. Looks like UA didn’t factor in the increased labor costs when making this decision. What a shocker.
The Continental agents at my station all hoped to come to United system. United’s baggage scanning system is the envy of all the carriers and we’re going to dump it.
Mark: Thanks for your insights. Yes, according to the internal United memo, the merged airline will use Continental tools for baggage scanning and gate management.
The major plus on this announcement from Travelport’s perspective is that it paves the way to retire the Apollo GDS
Be careful here… the name may be the same but not the functionality. Agency Apollo and United Apollo are very different platforms these days. 1V – Agency Apollo – has a lot of life yet in it and that has been underscored by Travelport’s connection of the Universal Desktop (TUB) and Universal API (uAPI) to 1V as a matter of priority. With 3 agency host platforms – Travelport is being challenged to provide quality support to all 3. However the one that is falling in popularity is Worldspan (1P) not Apollo (1V).
Cheers
For those of us that were former Apollo/Covia employees back in the “good old days,” this is indeed a sad bit of information (snif, snif).
There was a time back in the 80′s & 90′s that Apollo was the preeminent CRS Technologically. How times have changed.
Thank you for including this, Miles. I was there at Apollo/Covia and stuck around another 20 years. In the 80s and 90s, I could walk in to a clients office and feel good saying our system was the best in the industry.
Unfortunately, there came a time when I just knew the agencies didn’t believe me, anymore.
In my opinion this was a big mistake for the New United dominately over shadowed by Sub Co Management descions! Migration should not be the overall priority, and cheaper up front cost will effect a lot of flexibility that current UA Sub agents currently enjoy and are beneficial to the Star Alliance, and effective processing time of customers! I guess we will see Tilton/and Co Management have taken over, and subsequently blame old UA for future tech issues financially, sorry excuses, not to keep system that interfaces with alliance carriers much more smoothly and efficiently only time will tell, I know the front line employee from Sub Ua Culture will not let certain issues leave, Co just joined the Star Alliance less than 20 mo ago and have many issues interfacing with all their systems, let experience lead not a dominately controlled CO Culture make all these irrational decisions, because they they believe their culture was the best! Many in the world would disagree! Many wonder what propaganda was behind all the past JD Power Awards! Hum
For the amount of money lost in the first month of shares, fastair could have been paid for, for 10 yrs.
Does anyone know what is the total cost for United to migrate to SHARES?
Looks like the systems is a diaster. Third outage on the HP system since June